UK workers most confident of finding a new job within six months says global Randstad survey

UK workers most confident of finding a new job within six months says global Randstad survey

A global survey of the latest trends in job market sentiments by Randstad, the worlds second largest recruitment and HR services company, has found that the UK demonstrated the highest increase in job seeking confidence during the first quarter of 2011.

The most recent quarterly Workmonitor survey by Randstad revealed that nearly two thirds of UK employees (64%) are confident that they could secure comparable work with a different employer within six months, an eight percentage point increase on the last quarter of 2010.

The greatest decline in confidence over the quarter was in India, which saw a 6 percentage point drop[1]. The lowest levels of confidence were recorded in Japan, where only a third (34.8%) of workers felt confident in their ability to find comparable work[2] and in Greece, which witnessed an unsurprising 10 percentage point decline, following the recent turmoil in the country[3]. However, encouragingly, the overall global confidence index shows a steady upwards trend.

Mark Bull, Chief Executive Officer at Randstad UK, said: Although the recession formally ended in Autumn 2009 it continued to cast a long shadow over job seeking behaviour. Many employees remained too fearful to explore career options external to their organisation until they were more certain of our economic footing. Despite public sector challenges that fear is now evaporating. This increase in confidence is welcome news for UK plc and will ensure businesses can attract the top talent and fresh ideas needed to sustain the UK's continued recovery."

Randstads survey also shows that many workers are using social media to fuel their job search. Forty five per cent of UK employees reported leveraging social media to find employment opportunities and half (52%) said they used social media to find out about potential employers as part of their interview preparation.

UK employers have started to show signs of harnessing employee engagement with social media to make their organisations more attractive to potential recruits. The research showed that a third (35%) of UK employers now provide employees with guidelines on how to best present the company within social media. However, Asian countries have demonstrated that they are further advanced in realising this opportunity, with 70% of employers in India and 52% of employers in China providing such guidelines to their employees.